Description: Archive file compressed by the standard GNU zip (gzip) compression algorithm; contains a compressed collection of one or more files; commonly used on Unix operating systems for file compression.Gzip is standardly installed on most Unix operating systems and is recognized by most file decompression utilities for Mac, Windows, and Unix. Gzip compression, while similar to .ZIP files, should not be confused with ZIP compression.

Technical Details: A GZ file extension is a compressed archive file format that uses the GNU GZip compression archive algorithm. This type of file is a container file, designed to hold a collection of compressed individual files as one block. GZ files were first used in 1993, and used a combination of Huffman coding and LZ77 coding for compression called the DEFLATE algorithm. This type of archive is common in Unix and Linux operating systems. GZ files are supported in other operating systems including windows and Mac OS X using their standard decompression file utilities. GZ files are similar in format and function to ZIP files, but are not the same, and are not interchangeable. TAR files, commonly found on Unix operating systems, are compressed using Gzip compression, and must first be decompressed before they can be opened.